


It's Never Been This Way Before

by ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Anxiety, Arum is an anxious lizard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm not a scalie but I'm not a coward, M/M, Nightmares, No Smut, Rilla understands, description of injury, it isn't super graphic though, maybe a little bit of angst, no beta we die like men, only softness here, they love damien so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 18:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18629263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand/pseuds/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand
Summary: Sir Damien is a Knight of the Second Citadel. Arum can deal with this... he thinks. Rilla's there to convince him he can.





	It's Never Been This Way Before

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction... ever. Please be gentle. I am smol and very afraid. Title is from George Ezra's "Get Away" which I listened to almost exclusively while writing this (there was also Hozier).

Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap. 

Rilla’s eyes snap open, and she lifts her head off her pillow to look towards the foot of the bed, where she has a feeling she’ll find the source of the noise that sounds suspiciously like claws pattering on the hardwood floor. 

Arum is pacing back and forth in their bedroom, staring intently at the floor. Rilla flops back down with a huff, and glares over the blanket hiding most of her face from the lizard’s view. “Arum? What… are you doing?”

Arum freezes in place, his head snapping in her direction, eyes wide like she’s just caught him stealing her snacks (she has caught him stealing her snacks before - though he’d absolutely denied enjoying her human food - and if that’s what he’s doing at this time of night she’s going to throttle him). 

“Amaryllis. I - apologize. I did not intend to wake you,” Arum says, and he at least has the decency to look a little bashful, his gaze dropping back to the floor. “I - couldn’t sleep.”

“And you thought pacing the floor would help you fall asleep?” Rilla asks skeptically, sitting up to look at him more directly. 

Observation: Subject is restless. Upper appendages are fidgeting with sleeve cuffs. Lower appendages are crossed over lower pectorals, in a way that seems almost… comforting? Protective? Clawed toes tap impatiently on the floor. 

“Arum, what’s wrong?” Rilla sees the signs of anxiety, she’s learned to read these signs so well in Damien, though she can admit it is a little strange seeing them in Arum. 

“Nothing. I’m… fine. I just have some things on my mind and needed to go over them before coming back to bed,” Arum replies, refusing to meet her gaze from the bed. “I’ll leave. You can go back to sleep. I won’t disturb you anymore.” 

Before he can turn to the door that leads out to the living area of her hut, Rilla slides her legs off the bed and pads over to him, stopping between him and the door. 

“Arum. This clearly isn’t something to do with your work, because if it was you’d be using it as an excuse. Saints know you use work as an excuse to not sleep often enough. Something’s bothering you. Talk to me.” She takes a step closer to him until they’re face-to-face and places her hands on either side of his face. “You’re worried about something, I can see it.”

“Amaryllis, I am not worried,” Arum snaps, yanking his head out of her grasp and backing away. She levels him with a glare and he gazes back at her, a stubborn rattle emanating from deep in his chest. She is actually surprised when Arum breaks first. She’s tired enough that she was planning on giving him roughly five seconds to crack before she would march past him huffing her frustration and flop back onto the bed. 

Observation: Subject is still fidgeting. Shoulders slump forward. Eyes, bright violet (Saints, Damien, now you’ve got me calling them that in my head, what have you done?), eyes are… glazed. Almost empty but not quite. There’s something there but I can’t read the emotion. 

She can’t help taking another step closer to him, needing to comfort him somehow. She’s never seen him like this, and she’s worried. What’s gotten him so shaken?

“Arum?”

“I… I am afraid, Amaryllis. It is not a - feeling - I am accustomed to. I have always thought fear to be a distinctly human emotion” - his voice drips with frustration and disgust as he says this, his opinion of the human body and psyche still remarkably low despite his affection for Rilla and Damien - “but. Since meeting you, and Damien. I’ve realized… I’ve just never cared enough about something to justify feeling fear. The Keep has always been able to care for itself - apart from its illness last year - and so have I. But our fragile little Honeysuckle, charging into battle with no regard for his own safety. No sense of self-preservation. Sir Angelo brought him home last week with his arm broken and unconscious, bleeding from a gash on his head, and already he is back on duty. Seeing him injured like that, I was reminded of just how fragile you humans are. Just how easy you are to kill, how quickly your life can flicker out like a candle - blown out in the wind!”

He looks up and his frill rustles slightly when he meets her gaze. He continues, “Before, I never dreamed. That, too, seemed a phenomenon reserved for… less monstrous beings than I. But since Angelo brought him home that day, I’ve had such… Terrifying dreams. Damien dying in battle, alone. Bleeding out while the battle rages on, with no one near enough to hear his cries. Sometimes he is unconscious, before I can reach him, unable to hear me call to him even as I try so desperately to - to do something. To save him, to get him to you, to help him.” 

Rilla’s eyes are wide, looking at her lizard who suddenly seems so small, curled into himself in fear and what might be a twinge of embarrassment. She closes the distance between them, and takes one of his hands - which has curled into a tight fist, his claws scraping into the scales that cover his palm - in her own, her other hand reaching up to cup his cool, smooth cheek. 

“Arum, I’m- I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” 

“Because it’s foolish. I shouldn’t be consumed by this - ridiculous fear. I am a rational creature, I am not a slave to mundane feelings. I shouldn’t be… afraid,” Arum snaps, a frustrated hiss escaping his lips. 

Rilla squeezes his hand, and pushes his chin up gently so she can look him in the eyes. “Arum, you love him. It’s ok to be worried about him. I worry about him, too. He’s a knight, and that’s a dangerous job. And sometimes he gets hurt. But I can promise you, he’s not as delicate as you think.

When I first met Damien, it was because he was injured and had nowhere else to go. I patched him up, and from then on he just - kept coming back. Some of the scrapes he got himself into were worse than others, and he always panicked about dying from an injury or an illness, no matter how small it was. Honestly, he worried enough for the both of us, and it didn’t really occur to me that one day he could get really hurt. That someone could hurt him in a way that I couldn’t fix. Until one day it happened - there was a monster outside the Citadel. Some creature with a venomous bite. His comrades managed to get him to me, but I’d never seen a bite like that. It wrapped around his whole torso, from his chest all the way around to the back of his ribs. And the whole area had just… putrefied. The skin around every tooth mark had died within a matter of minutes. If it had been his hand or his leg, I could have amputated it to keep the poison from spreading. But this - I had to do something. I tried every herbal remedy, every medicine I could think of to try and heal him, but nothing worked. We had just started calling what was going on between us a relationship, and to be so close to losing him when everything was so new was… The worst feeling.”

Arum looked at her, and tilting his head asked softly, “What did you do?”

“Eventually I noticed that the areas of dead skin around the wounds weren’t growing. And then I realized - the poison didn’t spread through the bloodstream - it only affected the wounds themselves. I cut away the dead areas and stitched him up, and he woke up a couple of hours later. The feeling of relief that I felt when he woke up was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been worried that I’d never get to hear his voice again, hear him panic about how easily his wounds could get infected, hear him go on hour-long poetic monologues about his feelings for me, hear him tell stories of his Knighthood that I could get lost in forever. As soon as he was awake I practically threw myself at him and demanded that he never do that to me again.

I didn’t want him to fight anymore, I didn’t want him to get hurt. But he wouldn’t hear of it. I’ve never heard him be as sure of anything as he was about this. He told me…

Recorded Audio Log: (Damien’s voice, weak and exhausted, but calm and assured) Rilla, I’m sorry to have worried you so. It pains me to know that I have caused you harm. But I cannot promise you that I will not again return to battle. I have a duty as a knight to protect this Citadel, and I intend to honor that commitment. The people of the Second Citadel are civilians, far more vulnerable than I. If I were not there to take a blow or two for the sake of my home, who would those blows fall to? I cannot in good conscience let my home be unprotected when I am able to fight to keep it safe for those who are unable to defend themselves. If I can take a blow that, yes, hurts, but that I will survive, in the place of someone who would not survive it, I would gladly take that blow a thousand times over. And besides, how could I possibly worry for myself when I have such a capable doctor to keep me on my feet?

“He’s so much stronger than you give him credit for, Arum. Yes, humans are easily broken, easily hurt, easily killed. But Damien is strong despite all of that. Like you said - he was hurt pretty badly last week, and he’s back on duty like nothing happened. Pushing through so much pain because he is strong enough to fight to protect those who wouldn’t be able to fight, whether they were injured or not. Every time he gets hurt, he pushes his own needs aside because they aren’t important to him. If he was as delicate as you seem to believe, he would have given up on being a knight a long time ago.”

Arum shakes his head in disbelief, but there is something unmistakably fond in his eyes and the gentle upward curve of his mouth. “I suppose you’re right, Amaryllis. It seems I haven’t been giving our Honeysuckle enough credit.” 

“For all his hypochondria and anxiety, Damien’s got a pretty tough exterior. And he’s got us, too. We might not be able to keep him out of harm’s way, but at least we can be there to help him get through it,” Rilla says and, with a gentle tug, begins to pull Arum back toward the bed, “Now, come on. Let’s get some sleep so we’re actually conscious when he gets home tomorrow.” 

As they get settled in the bed, tangling up in each other in a way that neither of them could have ever dreamed would be so comfortable, Arum nuzzles into Rilla’s hair and whispers, “Thank you, Amaryllis.”

Rilla yawns in reply and snuggles closer, and both are asleep in minutes. The next morning, when Damien arrives home, a little battered and bruised but mostly alright, Arum wraps himself around his little Honeysuckle Knight, fiercely protective and proud, still baffled that he is lucky enough to love and be loved by someone so strong. Amaryllis was right, Damien is stronger than he looks, and maybe, just maybe, that means that they’re all going to be ok.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr @shorter-than-her-tbr-pile  
> Comments, kudos, and external validation give me life. Also if there's anything that I should have tagged for content warnings/triggers please let me know and I'll add them! Since this is my first fanfic I have no expectations, and I'm also terrified of writing characters that aren't mine? Because I wanna get their voices right, and I hope I did them justice. Also I'm posting this at 2am without any beta because it be like that sometimes. I just love the idea of Damien not being the only one who's anxious in this relationship.


End file.
